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In the years following World War II, images of comradeship, particularly of men being physically close, largely disappeared from the public record. But, as these stunning photographs attest, ordinary American men in the extraordinary circumstances of World War II were affectionate, winsome, and playful - disarmingly innocent in a time of cataclysmic peril. Led by photography giant Captain Edward J. Steichen, the U.S. Naval Aviation Photographic Unit was organized during the war to record the daily experiences of Navy men all over the world and to provide newspapers and magazines with images to promote the American cause. The unit's photographers, which included Wayne Miller, Horace Bristol, Victor Jorgensen, and Barrett Gallagher, took thousands of pictures of soldiers as they relaxed, trained, prepared for the next battle, and waited. This book brings together more than 150 of those photographs culled from the National Archives, including many that have never before been published. Whereas World War II imagery tends to be dominated by combat photography and monumental depictions of weaponry, these photographs offer a rare, intimate look at the Navy men themselves.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

I absolutely "loved" this book from the first moment I picked it up and opened its first page. The photographs captivate a time when men could show affection without the worry of not being masculine enough. Thank you Evan Bachner for sharing your vision and putting together these marvellous photographs of this celebrated time in History. My dad was in the Navy during World War II and lived on a destroyer, and he has just recently started telling me some of "his" stories of being out at sea, sometimes for months at a time. I came across photographs years ago when I was just a young man of my dad and his ship-mates, and his photographs could easily been a part of this beautiful collection that Evan Bachner has displayed in "At Ease". I look forward to "At Ease,part Two."

Too often, when modern schoolchildren consider WW2, they see the parades of elderly veterans, stooped, wrinkled, bemedaled, but essentally OLD.

What the compiler of this book has managed to do is to collect a wide range of photo material, much of it of very high quality, which shows the young men who fought WW2 as they were then. That is, as young men. Slim, upright, happy, fit. Often little more than schoolboys themselves. In that regard, this book is reminiscent of Herbert List's book "Junge Manner".

I was so impressed with my book that I've ordered a second copy to be put into the library of the secondary school at which I'm a governor. WW2 seems to be popular in history lessons. Let the children of today see the youths of yesteday as they were at their prime.

As an historical reenactor, and daughter of a WWII Navy veteran, I am constantly on the outlook for books and information on the lesser known ideas and culture surrounding WWII. This book was a real eye opener! While the author is open about his sexuality and the pictures were no doubt hand picked with a certain agenda, they show a world of innocence that was unconcerned with homophobic ideas of how a man should or should not act. Being together for long periods of time in uncertain circumstances, deep friendships definitely form. Your buddy could be the one to save your life during an attack, or you might loose him in a split second from a torpedo. As a woman, I can imagine the close friendships that would form today under similar circumstances among women, and I imagine men during that time were not held back by all the macho ideas of today. A beautiful book with striking photography, this stands as an important contribution to understanding our father's and grandfather's lives during WWII.

In Evan Bachner's very imformative introduction to this extraordinary book, he tells of how a photograph of a soldier from World War II caught his eye in the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1997. The photographer was someone he had never heard of before, Horace Bristol. Mr. Bachner in his dogged research discovered that the great photographer Edward J. Steichen had created the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit and then had assembled professional photographers in addition to Mr. Bristol who had made World War II photographs and ultimately printed over 15,000 images by the end of the war. Now seven years after Mr. Bachner's initial discovery, we have this stunning collection of over 150 beautifully composed, exposed and printed photographs by no less than the publisher of fine art books, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Although there are a few photos of sailors working, for the most part these men are truly "at ease" as they sun themselves, exercise, swim, read, play games, write letters, horse around or just relax. Had Walt Whitman been alive during this era, he would have written paens to these men and their "love of comrades." There is a wonderful innocence about these photographs of men among friends. And we can all be glad that because of the order of President Truman a little later, that no photographer would ever again shoot black sailors in segregated sleeping quarters. (There are a few photographs here of black sailors relaxing together and only one shot of a black sailor and white sailor together.)

Surely this book will be on everyone's short list of best photography books of 2004. It's destined to become a classic.

Without a doubt this book will touch the memories and hearts of everyone who pauses to slowly peruse these casual photographs of men at sea in World War II. Without the overtones of trying to make a statement about the camaraderie that accompanies men off at war, these photographs simply follow a healthy group of sailors resting on board ship, working at their tasks, bonding in the bunk rooms and in play on the decks and the foc'sle. There is an obvious physical relationship that is transmitted in the gentlest ways, further proof that men together find the emotional and physical support so needed in the time of isolation from the world.

It is to Evan Bachner's credit that he shares this truly sensitive body of work with the public at a time when we all need to understand not only the plight of the men away at war today, but of the common threads of pansexuality that have never been a threat but only a solace in a world infected with prejudice. Grady Harp, December 2004